Species: Cave lion. Ancient animals. Cave Lion Ancient Cave Lion

Sometimes they ask: “Which of the large predatory animals lived in the Ice Age in Europe and North Asia?” And many do not believe when you answer: "Lion."

Found at the mouth of the river Yana's femur of one large predator greatly interested in 1891 I.D. Chersky. Despite some doubts and logical incompatibility, he concluded that in the age of the mammoth, there were tigers next to him in Yakutia. Since then, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge, and many paleontological finds have been collected.

In 1971, professor N.K. North America published a great article. In this work, data were used on exhibits - lion bones found in different time in Yakutia (they are kept at the Moscow Zoological Institute). So our story about lions will mainly be based on the materials of N.K. Vereshchagin.

Single bones of lions have been found in more than ten places in northern and central regions Yakutia. In 1930, M.M. Ermolaev on the Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island, in 1963, the geologist F.F. Ilyin found the skulls of lions that lived in the Ice Age on the Mokhoho River, a tributary of the Olenok. The parietal and other bones of a lion found on Duvanny Yar in Kolyma are in the museum of the YanC of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In addition, the bones of the king of beasts, a mighty lion, were found at the mouth of the Syuryuktyakh - a tributary of the Indigirka, at Berezovka - a tributary of the Kolyma, Adycha - a tributary of the Yana, as well as in the basins of the river. Aldan and Vilyuy. There are some rare finds in regional museums. The Ytyk-Kyuel Museum of the Tattinsky District exhibits the lower jaw of a lion that lived more than ten thousand years ago.

So, according to reliable scientific data, in the Ice Age in Yakutia, along with such giants as the mammoth and rhinoceros, there lived not a tiger, as was sometimes written, but a lion. In reference books and in scientific literature, it is called not just a lion, but a cave lion. In fact, the lions of the Ice Age in Yakutia did not live in caves. They must have hunted wild horses, bulls, and deer on the ice-free plains and foothills. A ferocious and powerful predator, about which in question, paleontologists call not only the cave lion, but sometimes the tiger or Pleistocene lion. However, he most of all looked like a lion.

For the first time this predator appeared in the central steppes of Europe and Asia just before the beginning of the Quaternary period. Having greatly multiplied at the height of the Ice Age, at the very end of the late Pleistocene, they, like mammoths, for some reason died out. Pleistocene lions were not the direct ancestors of the lions now found in Africa. During the late Pleistocene period, they spread throughout Northeast Asia and North America. As evidenced by fossil bones, very large cave lions were found in North America. Modern African lions in length reach a maximum of 2.2 m, while the lions of Eurasia of the Ice Age - 2.5-3.4 m. And the predators of North America, which died out tens of thousands of years ago, had a length of up to 2.7-4.0 m!

When the Ice Age began in the northern latitudes of Eurasia and North America, these large animals sometimes they were forced to hide from snowy winds and cold weather in mountain caves. And they began to encounter people of the Stone Age who lived there, who left many drawings of lions on the walls of their dwellings. As archaeologists and geologists write, such "portraits" of lions were found in caves in France, Spain, England, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Italy and in the USSR - near Odessa, Tiraspol, Kiev, in the Urals, in the Perm region.

Sometimes sculptures of lions made of bone, stone and clay are also found. The people of the Stone Age, fearing these formidable predators, worshiped them so as not to be torn to pieces on the hunt and in fights in the caves. Experts confirm that the bones of some lions, especially the interorbitals, have pathological changes, defects associated with diseases. It can be seen that they were prone to bone diseases, suffered from gadflies or similar tsetse flies that infect livestock in our time.

Only two, almost completely preserved, cave lion skeletons are known throughout the world. One of them is considered the most valuable exhibit of the Brno Museum in Czechoslovakia. The second skeleton was found in the United States in oil that thickened like tar and then hardened. When you look at the photograph of the skeleton, the strongly elongated legs and tail of the cave lion are striking. Rib cage narrow, neck rather long. Judging by the skeleton, the beast had very strong forelimbs. On the lower and upper jaws there are powerful sharp fangs similar to the head of a kyle.

Currently, the number of lion populations in the world is very small. At the end of the 60s, there were 250 predators in the zoos of India, about 150 thousand in the national parks of African states ...

Sometimes they ask about bears from the time of the mammoth and the cave lion. In 1966, in Poland, during the extraction of marble in the Sudeten Mountains, a previously unknown mountain cave with branches of several floors was discovered. As scientists suggest, it was formed about 50 million years ago as a result of leaching of limestone by groundwater circulating through the cracks of these water-soluble rocks. In this cave, during the Ice Age, both wild animals and people of that time found shelter. During the exploration of the cave, about 40,000 different bear bones were found.* Therefore, it was called the "Bear Cave". Along with the remains of so many bears, rare bones of wolves and martens were found. In one of the deepenings of the cave, people of the Stone Age lived. When more than half of the territory of Europe was under an ice sheet, and bears, and wolves, and lions, apparently, were forced to take refuge in caves. The emaciated, disease-prone animals perished en masse. This is how the animal cemetery was born. However, scientists have not yet given an exact explanation for the unusual accumulation of bear bones.

The "Bear Cave" is very long, has branches hundreds of meters long. They, either narrowing or expanding, form underground halls, reminiscent of fairy-tale palaces. When you illuminate the dark halls, it is as if you find yourself in the country of Olonkho, and an enchanting picture of an unknown underworld opens before you. The ceiling is decorated with hanging crystal-like icicles. Below - a labyrinth sparkling with various sparks of light, graceful outgrowths of calcareous formations! In places they converge with the same color and brilliance in stepped shafts, similar to streams frozen in a swift run. Everything beautiful in nature is the property of all mankind. That's why "Bear Cave" was included in a tourist route, and construction work began here in 1980.

There are no such large caves in Yakutia, but individual bones of a bear, wolf, elk and other mammoth companions are found. By the way, the corpse of a wolverine was once discovered at the famous Berelekhsky cemetery.

Many questions arise about the fact that in the Ice Age the inhabitants of the harsh North were relatives of miniature, but swift-footed roe deer. The inhabitants of Yakutia are well aware of these graceful animals that move with such smooth and wide jumps, as if they were seen in slow motion frames.

One of the species of roe deer, named sorgelia in honor of the German geologist who was the first to find the skull of an ancient goat in the world, lived in Yakutia next to mammoths during the Ice Age. The sorgelia skull was found in 1973 on the Adycha River (a tributary of the Yana) by local history teacher M.A. Sleptsov. This is the second such trophy after the discovery by a German geologist. As a rare exhibit, it is now kept in the Central Moscow Zoological Museum, and a plaster copy of the skull is exhibited in the Adychansk School Museum...

When you talk about the Ice Age, the giants of that time, listeners usually ask a lot of questions. These are mostly questions related to the latest geological history of the Earth, called the Quaternary. In just one million years, there have been significant fluctuations in the climate of the Northern Hemisphere of the Earth, great changes in the animal and plant kingdoms. The world of large mammals suffered especially tangible damage. In Yakutia and throughout the north of Asia and Europe, mammoths have completely died out, woolly rhinos, lions, wild bulls, sorgelias. Most of the surviving animals have significantly decreased in size. Modern horses, elks, polar bears, compared to their ancient Ice Age relatives, are shredded species.

Spreading

In Europe, the first lions appeared about 700,000 years ago and belonged to the subspecies Panthera leo fossilis, the so-called Mosbach lion. That it is sometimes also referred to as the cave lion can be misleading. As a rule, the term cave lion refers to a later subspecies Panthera leo spelaea. Mosbach lions reached a length of up to 2.4 m, excluding the tail, and were half a meter larger than modern lions. They were the size of a liger, a hybrid of a lion and a tigress. From this large subspecies came the cave lion, which appeared about 300,000 years ago. It was distributed throughout northern Eurasia and even during the ice ages penetrated deep into the north. In the northeast of Eurasia, a separate subspecies was formed, the so-called East Siberian cave lion ( Panthera leo vereshchagini), which reached the American continent through the then existing land connection between Chukotka and Alaska. Spreading south, it developed into the American lion ( panthera leo atrox). The East Siberian cave lion became extinct at the end of the last major glaciation about 10 thousand years ago. The European cave lion died out, probably in the same period, but it is possible that it survived for some time in the Balkan Peninsula. Regarding the lions that existed on it until the beginning of our era, it is not known whether they were cave lions.

Appearance

fossil skull

The skeleton of an adult male cave lion, found in 1985 near the German Siegsdorf, had a height at the withers of 1.20 m and a length of 2.1 m without tail. This corresponds to a very large modern lion. At the same time, the Siegsdorf lion was inferior to many of its relatives. Cave lions were on average 5-10% larger than modern lions, but did not reach the huge size of Mosbach lions and American lions. Rock paintings from the Stone Age allow us to draw some conclusions about the coloring of the coat and mane of the cave lion. Particularly impressive depictions of lions have been found in southern France in the Chauvet cave in the Ardèche department, as well as in the Vogelherdhöhle cave in the Swabian Alb. Ancient drawings of cave lions always show them without a mane, which suggests that, unlike their African or Indian relatives, they either did not have one, or it was not so impressive. Often these images show the tuft on the tail characteristic of lions. The coloring of the wool, apparently, was one-color.

Lifestyle

Cave lions on the hunt

Relatives

In contrast to the Mosbach lion, regarding the classification of which as Panthera leo fossilis unanimity has always reigned among scientists, there has been a long debate about the cave lion, whether it is a lion, a tiger, or even whether it should be singled out as a separate species. In 2004, German scientists were able to unambiguously identify it using DNA analysis as a subspecies of the lion. Thus ended the dispute that has existed since the first description of this animal in 1810. However, the Pleistocene lions of the north formed their own group, distinct from the lions of Africa and Southeast Asia. To this so-called group Spelaea included the Mosbach lion ( P.l. fossilis), cave lion ( P.l. spelaea), East Siberian lion ( P.l. vereshchagini) and the American lion ( P.l. atrox). All modern breeds of lions belong to the group Leo. Both groups separated about 600 thousand years ago. Individual fossil specimens of an extinct american lion were larger than the Mosbach lion and thus were the largest felids that ever existed. Previously they were considered separate view called the giant jaguar. According to the latest research, the American lion, like the cave lion, was not a separate species, but a subspecies of lions ( panthera leo).

see also

Notes

Literature

• A. Turner: The big cats and their fossil relatives. Columbia University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-231-10229-1
• J Burger: Molecular phylogeny of the extinct cave lion Panthera leo spelea, 2003. Molecular phylogeny of cave lion.

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See what the "Cave Lion" is in other dictionaries:

CAVE LION- an extinct predatory mammal of the cat family. Lived in the 2nd floor. Pleistocene beginning of the Holocene, in Europe and North. Asia. The size of a large lion or tiger. He lived not in caves, but on the plains and in the foothills ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

CAVE LION- (Felts spelaea), an extinct predatory mammal of the family. feline. Known from the Pleistocene to the beginning of modern. epoch (Holocene) of Europe and North. Asia. Larger in size than a tiger and a lion, and in the structure of the skeleton had the features of both of them. Lived on the plains and in ... ... Biological encyclopedic dictionary

cave lion- an extinct predatory mammal of the cat family. Lived in the 2nd half of the Pleistocene, beginning of the Holocene, in Europe and North Asia. The size of a large lion or tiger. He lived not in caves, but on the plains and in the foothills. * * * CAVE LION CAVE LION… … encyclopedic Dictionary

cave lion- (Felis spelaea) an extinct predatory mammal of the cat family. Lived in the second half of the Pleistocene and at the beginning of the Holocene in Europe and North Asia. It was the size of large modern lions or tigers, and in the structure of the skeleton, especially ... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

cave lion(Panthera leo spelaea), is an extinct subspecies of lions that lived during the Pleistocene period in Europe and Siberia.

The cave lion was probably the largest member of the cat family, larger than the Ussuri tiger.

For the first time, a cave lion was described by a skull by a German doctor who natural sciences, Georg August Goldfuss.

In Europe, the lion appeared about 700 thousand years ago and probably descended from Mosbach lion.

Mosbach The lions were larger than modern lions, the body length was up to 2.5 m (not including the tail), and they were about half a meter taller.

It is from the Mosbach lion that, as it is believed, the cave lion originated about 300 thousand years ago, which spread throughout Eurasia.

There was and East Siberian caveman a lion , in the north and northeast of Eurasia, probably through Berengia, it also entered America, leaving for the south of the American continent, where it formed american lion.

american lion

The extinction of the East Siberian and European species lions occurred about 10 thousand years ago, at the end of the last, Valdai (Wurm) glaciation.

There is evidence that the European subspecies of the cave lion was found for some time in the Balkans, but it is not clear whether it was a cave lion or another subspecies.

In 1985, near the German town of Siegsdorf, the skeleton of a male cave lion was found, which was a little over 2 meters long and 1.2 m high, which approximately corresponded to the parameters of a modern lion.

Cave lions were about 5-10 percent taller than modern lions, although they were smaller than American or Mosbach lions.

There are unique Paleolithic rock paintings in the France Vogelherdhöhle caves, in Alsace, and in the south of France, in the Chauvet cave.

The lion was the totem ancient man like a cave bear

Lions lived in Europe and northern Asia not only during the interglacial period, but during the period of glaciation themselves, apparently the cold was not terrible for them, and there was enough food.

In 2004, scientists from Germany managed to find out, as a result of DNA research, that The cave lion is not a separate species, but a subspecies of the lion..

During the Pleistocene, the northern lions formed their own group, different from the African and Southeastern lions. This group included Mosbach lion, cave lion East Siberian lion and American lion.

Nowadays, all types of lions belong to the so-called "Leo" group, and all types of lions began to diverge about 600 thousand years ago.

Some species of the extinct American lion were much larger than the Mosbach lion and, therefore, were the largest predators. cat family that were present on our Earth.

Asian lion (Panthera leo persica) was distributed throughout southern Eurasia from Greece to India. Now about 300 individuals have survived in the Gir reserve in the state of Gujarat, India.

In the 1990s, to save the endangered population, India donated several pairs of Asiatic lions to European zoos.

The Asian or Indian subspecies of the lion has a mass of 150 to 220 kg, mostly 160-190 kg in males, and 90-150, usually 110-120 kg, in females. His mane is not so thick, and fits closer to the body.

The Asian lion has a squat body, which creates a deceptive impression of its smaller size compared to the African. But the record length of an Asian lion is almost three meters.

In India, until about the middle of the last century, lions lived in Punjab, Gujarat and even in West Bengal.

On the Kathiyawar peninsula (in the southwest), in the Gir forest, a small population of Asiatic lions is still preserved, but there are less than 150 individuals left. These lions were taken under state protection in 1900.

And the last Indian lion was killed in 1884.

barbary lion (panthera leo leo), an extinct subspecies of the lion, originally distributed in North Africa. Some individuals of lions currently living in captivity are probably descended from Barbary lions, but there are no longer purebred representatives of the subspecies among them.

It was the Barbary lions that were used by Carl Linnaeus in 1758 to describe and classify lions. The weight of males ranged from 160 to 250 kg, less often 270 kg, females - from 100 to 170 kg.

barbary lion, along with the extinct cape lion (Panthera leo melanochaitus), was the largest modern subspecies of the lion. His most notable difference was a particularly thick dark mane that extended well past his shoulders and hung down over his belly.

The Barbary lion in historical times was found throughout the African continent, located north of the Sahara.

The Barbary lion lived, in addition to the North African semi-deserts and savannahs, also in the Atlas Mountains. He hunted deer, wild boars and bubals (a kind of dog-headed monkeys).

The ancient Romans often used the Barbary lion in "pleasure fights" against Turanian tiger, also extinct, or to fight gladiators.

The proliferation of firearms and the deliberate extermination policy of the Barbary lion has led to its population being greatly reduced in North Africa and the Atlas Mountains. And at the beginning of the 18th century, the Barbary lion almost disappeared in North Africa, leaving only a small area in the northwest.

The last free Barbary lion was shot in the Moroccan part of the Atlas Mountains in 1922.

Initially, scientists proceeded from the fact that the Barbary lions became extinct in captivity. However, the Moroccan rulers received lions as a gift from the nomadic Berber tribes, even when these animals had already become quite rare.

IN late XIX century in the London Zoo lived a purebred Barbary lion named Sultan.

Those lions that in 1970 the Moroccan king Hassan II transferred to the zoo in Rabat were probably direct descendants of the Barbary lions, at least in phenotype, morphology, they clearly corresponded to the historical description of the Barbary lions.

The Addis Ababa Zoo has 11 lions that may be descendants of the Barbary lions. Their ancestors were the property of Emperor Haile Selassie I.

At the end of the 20th century, about 50 lions descended from the Barbary lived in zoos, however, there is evidence that they are not purebred, and have admixtures of other species.

cape lion (Panthera leo melanochaitus) is an extinct subspecies of lions. Cape lions lived on the southern coast of the African continent.

They were not the only subspecies of lions that lived on the territory of South Africa, and the exact range of their distribution has not yet been fully established.

The main habitat of the lions was the Cape province in the vicinity of Cape Town. The last Cape lion was killed in 1858.

Male Cape lions were characterized by a long mane that extended over the shoulders and covered the abdomen, as well as noticeable black tips of the ears.

The results of a study of the DNA of Cape lions revealed that this is not a separate subspecies, but most likely the Cape lion is only the most southern population. transvaal lion (Panthera leo krugeri).

Transvaal lion, also known as southeast african lion, a subspecies of the lion that lives in southern Africa, including the Kruger National Park. The name comes from the Transvaal region in South Africa.

Like all lions (with the exception of lions from Tsavo National Park), the male Transvaal lion has a mane. Males spend most of their time guarding their territory, while lionesses take on the responsibility of hunting and providing food for the pride.

Males reach a length of up to three meters (usually 2.5 cm), including the tail. Lionesses are smaller - about 2.5 meters. The weight of a male is usually 150-250 kg, females - 110-180 kg. The height at the withers reaches 90-125 cm.

This type of lion is characterized leucism, lack of melanin associated with mutation. The coat of the animal becomes light-light gray, sometimes even almost white, and the skin under it is pink (due to the absence of melanocytes).

Lions were also found in ancient Greece

A.A. Kazdym

List of used literature

Sokolov V.E. Rare and endangered animals. Mammals. M.: 1986. S. 336

Alekseeva L.I., Alekseev M.N. Triofauna of the Upper Pleistocene of Eastern Europe (large mammals)

Zedlag W. Animal world Earth. M., Mir. 1975.

Zoological journal. Volume 40, Issues 1-6, Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Moscow State University. M. V. Lomonosov. Zoo museum

West M., Packer C. Sexual selection, temperature, and the lion's mane. Washington DC. 2002

Barnett R., Yamaguchi N., I. Barnes, A. Cooper: Lost populations and preserving genetic diversity in the lion Panthera leo, Implications for its ex situ conservation. Kluwer, Dordrecht. 2006

Ronald M. Nowak Walker's Mammals of the World, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999

Barton M. Wildes Amerika Zeugen der Eiszeit. Egmont Verlag, 2003

Turner A. The big cats and their fossil relatives. Columbia University Press, 1997.

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And now a detailed article has arrived on these beasts with preliminary results research findings:

"Development Arctic zone In recent years, Russia has brought a lot of discoveries of ancient frozen mummies of mammals of the Ice Age. Nevertheless, the discovery of two cubs of a cave lion in the territory of Yakutia in the summer of 2015 became a real sensation. The mummies of ancient Pleistocene lions have never fallen into the hands of scientists before.

Thanks to the findings in different corners The Old World knows that ancient cats in Eurasia lived in a territory stretching from the New Siberian Islands to China and from Spain to Alaska.

At the end of the Ice Age, another name for which is the Pleistocene period, the ancient lion lived among the tundra steppes along with animals such as mammoths, musk oxen and reindeer, and was the strongest and dangerous predator. It belongs to the species Panthera spelaea(Goldfuss, 1810) of the cat family ( Felidae), order of predatory mammals ( Carnivora), extinct at the end ice age. The morphology of the cave lion simultaneously combines the features of a lion and a tiger. Disputes about which of the big cats this beast is closer to are still ongoing. But it is important to note that he was not the ancestor of either modern lions or tigers.

The Russian names for these extinct animals are the cave lion, the Pleistocene lion, the tiger lion. The latter was given by the Russian paleontologist N. K. Vereshchagin, who was one of the first to note the transitional exterior ancient lion- intermediate appearance between modern lion and tiger. scientific name Panthera spelaea the predator got it because for the first time its bones were found in caves (from lat. spelaea- caves) of Europe at the beginning of the century, and so far only one whole skeleton of this animal is known
an extinct species found in Bavaria.

Judging by the drawings of the Paleolithic era and the morphology of its bones, the cave lion was similar in appearance to the females of modern African and Asian lions and partly to modern Far Eastern tigers. The cave lion is characterized by a relatively larger head than that of modern lions and tigers. This confirms the ratio of the size of the skull of an ancient animal with the size of other bones of its skeleton. In addition, the skull of the ancient lion was relatively longer and narrower than that of lions and tigers, and therefore its muzzle is narrower and longer.

The most realistic depiction of cave lions in Chauvet Cave,
France, province of Ardeche. The age of the drawings is more than 30 thousand years.

According to the images of the cave lion made by the first artists, the ancient predator was of a dense physique with developed subcutaneous fat on the abdomen, which sagged, like in Amur tigers. Another feature of cave lions is the relatively large length of their limbs. From images from caves in Europe, it is also known that there were faint spots on the sides of the body, but the general color of the coat was uniform, the tail was shorter than that of a modern lion, and without a spherical tassel at the end. Ancient artists never depicted cave lions with a mane, and only occasionally emphasized the presence of short hair and even “suspension” under the lower jaw. Features of hair growth on the head of the Pleistocene lion resemble those of the Far Eastern tiger. He had small rounded ears and sideburns, which ancient artists emphasized.

In terms of size, the cave lion, on average, surpassed modern lions and tigers. At the same time, the Pleistocene lions of different populations differed from each other. In Europe, they were no larger than modern African lions and apparently weighed no more than 200-250 kg. Among the cave lions of Siberia and the Urals, sometimes there were giants with a skull length of more than 40 cm. The weight of such lions was at least 350 kg, and the height at the withers was about 140-150 cm. The length of the upper fangs of an ancient animal (together with the root) reached 14 cm - such predators could prey on any animals of that era.

Lions - close and distant relatives
In North America, cave lions lived in what is now Alaska and western Canada. In the more southern regions of this continent, another species of lions lived - Panthera atrox(Leidy, 1810), whose name in Latin means "terrible lion". There are no pictures of this lion, and its appearance can only be inferred from its bones and several complete skeletons found in asphalt pit traps* at the Rancho La Brea location in Los Angeles. About 10 thousand years ago, after the end of the Pleistocene period, this predator in America became extinct along with many other species of large mammals.

* In the late Pleistocene, at the foot of the hills, in an area now called Hollywood, swamps extended into which oil poured out under pressure to the surface. Animals, attracted by water, came there and stuck (in the literal sense of the word) to oil, which, under the action of atmospheric oxygen, thickened and turned into bitumen. After death, they were gradually immersed in bitumen, where their bones were preserved.

A study of mitochondrial DNA in modern and fossil lions showed that they form two groups. One group includes modern subspecies of lions from Africa and Asia, the other includes the Pleistocene lions of Eurasia and northern North America. In addition, based on the results of a molecular genetic study of the remains of lions of the second half of the Pleistocene from the northeast of Eurasia and Alaska, biologists came to the conclusion that the Pleistocene lions of this region (in the second half of the Pleistocene they formed a single area - Beringia) are closer to the Eurasian cave lions than the Pleistocene dire lions of the rest of North America.

Based on the DNA of Pleistocene and modern lions and the paleontological findings of these ancient predators, experts describe their history as follows. The oldest cats, resembling lions, appeared in Africa more than 2 million years ago. From here they settled in Eurasia, where the Mosbakh lion lived about 500 thousand years ago ( Panthera fossilis, Reichenau, 1906). From this species of predatory cats, apparently, the cave lions, who originally lived in Europe, originated. By the end of the Pleistocene, the lions that remained in Africa after migration formed the species of modern African lions, which settled from there to Eurasia.

The next stage in the evolution of cave lions is associated with the spread of this species to the northeast of Eurasia and its adaptation to a cold climate. The subspecies of the cave lion, which lived in the north of Yakutia 70-10 thousand years ago, was somewhat smaller than modern lions, and it belongs to the subspecies Baryshnikov et Boeskorov, 2013, named after paleontologist N.K. Vereshchagin. Like the European subspecies, the Yakut cave lion became extinct about 10 thousand years ago.

The post-glacial history of lions is associated with only two modern subspecies of these cats: African ( panthera leo leo J. A. All n, 1924) and Asian ( Panthera leo persica Meyer, 1826) by lions. The African lion (thought to include several subspecies) is 20-25% larger than the Asian lion, and its males have large manes. The male Asiatic lion has a smaller mane or no mane at all. body length African lion without tail length reaches 170-250 cm in males and 140-175 cm in females. Shoulder height is about 123 cm for males and 107 cm for females. The weight of large males can reach 250 kg.

Modern lions moved to Transcaucasia and Southwestern Europe, when cave lions had already died out here. Although there is little evidence of this settlement, they are supported by archaeological finds showing that lions in the first millennium BC lived in the southeast of Europe and in the Northern Black Sea region.

Findings of lion bones are known in the settlements of the Trypillia culture on the territory of modern Ukraine (VI-III millennium BC), and one find was made in the ancient settlement of Olvia (IV-II centuries BC) in the vicinity of the city of Nikolaev. Images of lions on ancient works of art of the continental part of Greece and among the Scythians of the Northern Black Sea region indicate that at that time these animals were well known to people. On the Balkan Peninsula, the bones of lions are found during excavations of settlements of the II-I millennium BC. e., and the most famous image ancient Greece- Nemean lion, killed by the mythical hero Heracles in the mountains of Kiferon (east of the Balkan Peninsula). In Transcaucasia, the maximum distribution modern species lions date back to the III-II millennium BC. e. Petroglyphs on the territory of Armenia show that lions in Transcaucasia in this era lived on the Armenian Highlands. Interestingly, the images of lions from Armenia represent animals with a large mane, like an African lion.

The disappearance of lions in Asia Minor, Transcaucasia and South-Eastern Europe occurred at the turn of our era. Unlike the extinction of the cave lion, the extinction of modern subspecies of lions is not due to climate change, but to human activity. Rapid population growth, changing landscapes, the extermination of herbivorous mammals that feed on big cats, and the active human hunt for lions, apparently, are the main reasons for the extinction of these animals in many areas of Eurasia.

In addition to direct archaeological data on lions of the historical period, there is one ancient Russian written source that suggests that these predators were distributed not only in the Northern Black Sea region, but also in the forest-steppe zone of the middle reaches of the Dnieper. In the "Instruction for Children", written by the great Kyiv prince Vladimir Monomakh, there is a mention of a large predator. "Teaching..." presents special interest, as it is the only secular work of art Ancient Rus', containing details of the life of that era that are not found in the annals. Monomakh describes an incident that happened to him while hunting during his reign in Turov and Chernigov (1073-1094): “A fierce beast jumped on my hips and overturned my horse, and God kept me unharmed.”

Monomakh does not name the attacked predator own name unlike other animals mentioned in the "Instruction ...": wild bulls, tarpans, deer, boars, bears, wolves. The absence of the name of the animal suggests that it was rarely seen at that time. Despite the brevity of the description, the ability of a predator to jump and the strength that allows a rider with a horse to fall to the ground show that it could not be any of the predatory animals mentioned in the Teaching ... - a bear or a wolf. This makes it possible to assume that the “fierce beast” was precisely the lion. Low population forest-steppe zone basins of the Dnieper and Don, a large number of large mammals, most likely, created the conditions for the existence of individual populations of lions in this area until the early Middle Ages.

Tiger cubs from the Uyandina River
Despite the fact that lions have been known to man since ancient times, quite a lot in the history and ecology of even modern lions remains poorly understood. At the same time, the subspecies of the Asiatic lion is already on the verge of extinction, and the range of the African subspecies has decreased by more than three times by the end of the 20th century. Data on animals that have become extinct on Earth over the past 10-12 thousand years are very important, as they can help to understand the reason for today's decrease in biological diversity. In particular, any finds of cave lions are interesting for determining the characteristics of the habitat and the reasons for the extinction of this species.

Two frozen mummies of a cave lion cub were found in the Abyisky region of Yakutia. The site is located on the right bank of the small Uyandina River, one of the left tributaries of the Indigirka River, approximately 25 km from the village of Abyiy. The discovery of lion cubs is a great success, because the mummies of predatory mammals of the Pleistocene period were not known before. The cubs were found in deposits dating from the end of the Pleistocene period, which most likely indicates that this is a subspecies of the Yakut cave lion. Panthera spelaea vereshchagini.

In recent years, interesting finds of frozen animal mummies of the Pleistocene period have been made by collectors of mammoth tusks. Collecting mammoth ivory - a traditional view economic activity population of Yakutia. At the end of July 2015, cave lion cubs were accidentally discovered by a team of subsoil users led by businessman Yakov Androsov during artificial thawing of one of the sections of the Uyandina river bank. In August 2015, the mummies were delivered to Yakutsk, where paleontologists from the Department of Mammoth Fauna Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) began to study them.

One of the finds is a complete and intact frozen mummy with wool. It can be described appearance and morphology of the cub. The mummy of the second cub is damaged, most likely by ice wedges inside the sediments in which it was buried. The head and part of the third of the body in front of it with one paw have been preserved from it. The estimated age of the lion cubs is one to three weeks. Such a conclusion can be drawn if you pay attention to the fact that the eyes of a whole found cub of a cave lion are half-open. In modern lions, cubs are born blind and their eyes fully open after about two weeks. In addition, computer scans of both finds showed that their milk teeth had not yet erupted (in modern lion cubs, milk teeth erupt three weeks after birth).

The soft tissues and fur of the cub are very well preserved. Immediately after the discovery, it was possible to straighten the tail and measure its length - about 7 cm, which is about a third of the body length. This is slightly less than that of the cubs of modern lions (about 3/5 of the body length). Claws have been preserved on the front and hind legs. Realizing the importance of their find, the members of the team, after examining, photographing and weighing, kept the mummies of the lion cubs in a frozen state, at a temperature of about −10 ° C. In a frozen state, they are preserved to this day for future research.

The cause of death of the ancient lion cubs has not yet been established. In the near future, they will be additionally examined on a CT scanner, but a preliminary similar study showed that there are no significant damages in the skeleton of a fully preserved cub. The sex of an ancient lion cub, like that of modern lion cubs, cannot be determined by external signs up to a month and a half.

At the age of one to two weeks, the cubs of modern lions remain helpless and completely dependent on their mother. The mother not only feeds them with milk, but also protects and warms them. cold weather, because the mechanism of thermoregulation is not yet fully developed in lion cubs. Before the cubs begin to walk (after 1.5-2 months), the lioness keeps at some distance from her group (pride), during the month she carries the cubs several times from one place to another in order to avoid increasing the smell in the den, which lion cubs can find other predators.

Cave lions of Yakutia
Although the way of life of the ancient lion of Yakutia remains little known, some of its features can already be judged now - after a preliminary study of the cubs found.

These predators lived in a cold climate, so their cubs were covered with thick and longer fur than the cubs of modern lions. Short tail and relatively small ears are also an adaptation to cold climates. In mammals living in similar climatic conditions, the length of the tail and the size of the ears are smaller than in closely related species living in warm climate. In addition, the found cubs show that the Yakut cave lion cubs had long limbs and they themselves were taller than their modern peers.

Scientists hope to learn about other features of the life of the cave lions of Yakutia as they study the finds, and some of them are guessed by the way of life of their modern relatives. One of the exciting questions is the structure of groups (prides) in cave lions.

The idea that cave lions did not form prides was expressed by the American paleontologist D. Guthrie. He was the first to draw attention to the fact that in African lions the formation of a large pride correlates with the size of the dominant male's mane. This secondary sexual characteristic is an indicator of the male's ability to form a pride and protect the territory he occupies. For example, the small size of the Asiatic lion's mane reflects the fact that this subspecies rarely forms groups of more than two females, and in African lions - owners of a large mane - the pride sometimes includes 20 females.

Evidence of fights between male Pleistocene lions, sometimes found on their bones, suggests that the males of these animals actively defended their territory, as, for example, tigers do. On the territory of a male tiger (an area of ​​more than 100 km 2 ) two or three tigresses can constantly live, and the male has to constantly defend his territory from the invasion of other males. The result of such fights: male tigers rarely live to be ten years old. Judging by the shoulder blade of a cave lion from Chukotka, male clashes with each other were commonplace.

Like other large mammals of the late Pleistocene period, cave lions in Yakutia lived in the tundra-steppe. At the same time, numerous finds of the bones of these lions in the caves of Europe indicate that they lived not only on the plains. In Yakutia, lions, apparently, arranged a den in dense thickets of willow in river valleys or in thickets of low trees in gullies and ravines, where it was easier to hide cubs.

Probably, the main way of hunting for Pleistocene lions was to stalk the victim, when the lion sneaked up to it up to a short throw distance of 20-50 m, and then overtook and killed it with several jumps. Plots of rugged terrain and watering holes were the most convenient for such hunts. The Alaskan cave lion has been found to prey on large animals. Here, in the permafrost, a frozen mummy of a male primitive bison partially eaten by lions has been preserved. Surprisingly, the methods of hunting bison by ancient lions did not differ from the methods of hunting buffalo by modern African lions. It can be seen from the bites and scratches on the skin of the bison that the cave lions acted in concert: one predator stopped the bison, holding it with its claws by the croup, and the other strangled it, grabbing the muzzle, clamping the mouth and nostrils of the bison with teeth and claws.

Recently, evidence has emerged that cave lions have even attacked young mammoths. On the skin of the Yuki mammoth found in 2010 in Yakutia (the absolute age is about 35 thousand years), scratches more than 10 cm long were found in the neck, legs and chest, left by the claws of a cave lion, piercing almost through the centimeter skin. Yuka, although a young seven-year-old female, weighed more than 500 kg with a height of about 160 cm at the withers. Scratches on the skin did not in themselves cause her death, but may have greatly weakened the animal.

The found mummies of the cubs of the cave lion will have to study the DNA, examine in detail the internal organs and soft tissues. Careful examination of the cub, for example, the size of the stomach and its contents will help explain the cause of his death. In the very near future, the result of determining the absolute age of this unique find from radioactive carbon from samples of the wool of lion cubs is also expected.

Candidate biological sciences Evgeny Mashchenko, Paleontological Institute. A. A. Borisyak RAS;
Doctor of Biological Sciences Gennady Boeskorov, Institute of Geology of Diamond and Precious Metals, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences;
Olga Potapova, curator of collections at the Museum of Mammoth Locations in Hot Springs, USA;
Candidate of Biological Sciences Albert Protopopov, Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), "Science and Life", No. 6, 2016

Physician and naturalist Georg August Goldfuss, who found the skull of a cave lion in the Franconian Alba.

In Soviet paleontology, at the initiative of Nikolai Vereshchagin, the cave lion was called the tigrolev.

Spreading

In Europe, the first lions appeared about 700,000 years ago and belonged to the subspecies Panthera leo fossilis, the so-called Mosbach lion. That it is sometimes also referred to as the cave lion can be misleading. As a rule, the term cave lion refers to a later subspecies Panthera leo spelaea. Mosbach lions reached a length of up to 2.4 m without taking into account the tail and were half a meter larger than modern lions. They were the size of a liger. From this large subspecies came the cave lion, which appeared about 300,000 years ago. It was distributed throughout northern Eurasia and even during the glaciations penetrated deep into the north. In the northeast of Eurasia, a separate subspecies was formed, the so-called East Siberian cave lion ( ), which reached the American continent through the then existing land connection between Chukotka and Alaska. Spreading south, it developed into the American lion ( panthera leo atrox). The East Siberian cave lion became extinct at the end of the last major glaciation about 10 thousand years ago. The European cave lion died out, probably in the same period, but it is possible that it survived for some time in the Balkan Peninsula. Regarding the lions that existed on it until the beginning of our era, it is not known whether they were cave lions.

Appearance

The skeleton of an adult male cave lion, found in 1985 near the German Siegsdorf, had a height at the withers of 1.20 m and a length of 2.1 m without tail. This corresponds to a very large modern lion. At the same time, the Siegsdorf lion was inferior to many of its relatives. Cave lions were on average 5-10% larger than modern lions, but did not reach the huge size of Mosbach lions and American lions. Rock paintings from the Stone Age allow us to draw some conclusions about the coloring of the coat and mane of the cave lion. Particularly impressive depictions of lions have been found in southern France in the Chauvet cave in the Ardèche department, as well as in the Vogelherdhöhle cave in the Swabian Alb. Ancient drawings of cave lions always show them without a mane, which suggests that, unlike their African or Indian relatives, they either did not have one, or it was not so impressive. Often this image shows the tuft on the tail characteristic of lions. The coloring of the wool, apparently, was one-color.

In Yakutia, a well-preserved corpse of a lion cub at the age of several months was found, as well as two more, slightly worse preserved specimens.

Lifestyle

Relatives

In contrast to the Mosbach lion, regarding the classification of which as Panthera leo fossilis unanimity has always reigned among scientists, there has been a long debate about the cave lion, whether it is a lion, a tiger, or even whether it should be singled out as a separate species. In 2004, German scientists were able to unambiguously identify it using DNA analysis as a subspecies of the lion. Thus ended the dispute that has existed since the first description of this animal in 1810. However, the Pleistocene lions of the north formed their own group, distinct from the lions of Africa and Southeast Asia. To this so-called group Spelaea included the Mosbach lion ( P.l. fossilis), cave lion ( P.l. spelaea), East Siberian lion ( P.l. vereshchagini) and the American lion ( P.l. atrox). All modern subspecies of lions belong to the group Leo. Both groups separated about 600 thousand years ago. Individual fossil specimens of the extinct American lion were larger than the Mosbach lion and thus were among the largest felids that ever existed. Previously, they were considered a separate species, called the giant